 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 456, 14 May 2012 |
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Welcome to this year's 20th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! "Wheezy" is the code name of the current testing and next stable release of Debian GNU/Linux. Although the world's largest Linux distribution project doesn't offer a roadmap or a release schedule, the first release candidate of the Debian Installer for "Wheezy", announced over the weekend, suggests that the release process is starting to take shape. See the news section below for further information and download links. Other topics from this week's issue include a first-look review of the recently-released OpenBSD 5.1, a follow-up on our earlier review of the Calligra office suite, the release of the English edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook, and a round-up of news from last week's Ubuntu Developer Summit in Oakland. Finally, two new distributions were added to the DistroWatch database last week - the Arch-based Bridge Linux with a choice of four desktop environments and the Gentoo-based Liberté Linux which offers unparalleled online security and anonymity for use in hostile environments. Happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Ralph Ellis) |
A look at OpenBSD 5.1
 I have always had a fondness for BSD-based systems. Even though my main desktops have usually been based on openSUSE due to its broad hardware support and software choices, I have experimented with PC-BSD, FreeBSD and OpenBSD as alternative desktops and admired their under-the-hood simplicity and strong documentation. I had never stayed long with OpenBSD in the past due to the difficulty in either getting the X Window System to work properly or printer configuration or problems with multimedia files or hardware incompatibility issues. I am pleased to say that the most recent version of OpenBSD addresses most of these issues and deserves serious consideration as a desktop system.
I did not pick an easy test machine for the amd64 edition of OpenBSD 5.1. My Gateway Dx4300 is an AMD Phenom X4 quad-core processor machine with an ATI Radeon HD 3200 on-board graphics chip and an ATI Radeon HD4650 video card. FreeBSD, PC-BSD, NetBSD and earlier versions of OpenBSD would not install on this system and I would experience kernel panics, with video card problems normally being the issue. This time the OpenBSD text-based installer had no problems picking up my hardware and installing to an external USB hard drive. You will want to look at the OpenBSD installation documentation online before you install to have a better knowledge of your choices but the default selections are intuitive.
While the menu selection for which hard drive that I want to install to correctly pulled up all of my various hard drives and partitions, it did not provide me with any information about the drives themselves to identify them. I have more than one USB hard drive so I knew that my installation drive would be either sd6 or sd7 but I could not tell which was which until I started turning off the USB drives in a process of elimination. OpenBSD's install program did not become flustered with this and correctly identified which disks were now available without a reboot. I took the default layout and installed without any issue. The network was properly configured and I booted up into a command line. You can enable XDM as a login manger which I did.
Some video hardware does not require any special configuration for setting up a working video system. With my system though, I needed to run the "X -configure" command as root and edit the file. Because both the on-board and PCI card video chips were enabled, this led to a much more complicated /etc/X11/xorg.conf than necessary. I disabled the on-board video and this resulted in a much more manageable file. The editing consisted of eliminating some extra entries for multiple screens and the listing of both "radeon" and "vesa" cards. There are no proprietary video drivers in OpenBSD so there is no 2D or 3D acceleration. OpenBSD does this for security reasons.
The project's position is that, if the code is not open and available to audit, it will not be allowed into the system. In my case the "radeon" driver provided strong video performance. The only drawback was that if I wanted to play video files via HDMI on my TV, I was limited in my video resolution choices and I couldn't play the audio through the TV, but otherwise it did work just fine with the on-board audio system. The overall video performance was more than adequate. Hard core gamers, though, will prefer a system with proprietary drivers available.
I started to install software with the pkg_add command. You do have to tell OpenBSD where to find the files (see here) and look at a list of the available software on the FTP server. I used a laptop to consult the OpenBSD documentation while I installed software and configured the system. This made life a lot easier. You do need to regularly refer to the documentation on how to setup window managers; the CUPS printing system, etc. Your best window manager choice is probably KDE 3.5.10. Remember to pick up the key KDE programs, CUPS, Ghostscript, Foomatic, and so on.
As a quick side note on printing, I have always had some difficulty in getting printing to work in OpenBSD before. Usually OpenBSD works better with parallel port connections and printing via the LPD system. However, my computer does not have a parallel port and CUPS could not pick up my Brother HL-5170DN via the USB connection. However, once CUPS was enabled and after I connected my printer to the router via an Ethernet port, KDE had no problems finding my printer as a TCP network printer. This was a handy fix to an annoying problem.
OpenBSD 5.1 amd64 does not have Adobe Flash support but the i386 version does. This is less of an issue now that many websites support HTML5. Of the available browsers, SeaMonkey 2.6 handled the HTML5 video content best. There are workarounds though. You can add plugins to redirect the Flash content to an external video player such as VLC which easily handles Flash files or capture and download the Flash content and then play it with a video player. OpenBSD also supports MPlayer and all the necessary codecs to play any video or audio content that you would like to explore.
The range of software available via the packages system covers all of the needed office, multimedia, graphics and development software that you could want. What is not available in the package collections can be build via ports. As a side note, FreeBSD or PC-BSD could never work with my Canon Lide 60 scanner but OpenBSD picked it up immediately once I added my user to the "sane" group. This was a pleasant surprise as this was a consistent graphics issue that I could never resolve in FreeBSD after version 6.1.
The device drivers are cleanly written in OpenBSD and, while not everything works immediately out of the box, all of my desktop requirements were met within two days of reading and configuration. A complete newbie user should not get into OpenBSD without some serious reading of the documentation first. More experienced users will have no problems working with OpenBSD as long as you keep the documentation close at hand. Die-hard tinkerers will have a field day and will be rewarded with a fast, functional desktop with a renowned reputation for software security and quality.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Ladislav Bodnar) |
First alpha of Debian Installer 7.0, The Debian Administrator's Handbook, Ubuntu Studio at UDS, Ubuntu 12.10 features
 Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 "Squeeze" was released over 15 months ago, so it shouldn't be too unreasonable to start focusing one's attention on the next stable Debian - version 7.0 "Wheezy". And indeed, it seems that the first tentative building block of the new release was announced over the weekend. It's the initial build of the Debian Installer for "Wheezy". Cyril Brulebois announced the fact on one of the project's mailing lists: "The Debian Installer team is pleased to announce the first alpha release of the installer for Debian 'Wheezy'. Improvements in this release of the installer: Add WPA support to installer; improvements in link detection and DHCP configuration, which should improve reliability for systems with flaky network cards; release DHCP lease at the end of the install to work around problems with non-RFC compliant DHCP servers; the requirements for hostnames have been clarified, and the parser tightened up to avoid letting through some really dodgy names; added Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) support; Linux kernel version has been updated to 3.2.16; default file system changed to ext4; allow Btrfs /boot partition (GRUB 2 and LILO); add support for Network Block Devices (NBD)." A range of CD, DVD and USB images for a number of architectures, featuring the new Debian installer, can be downloaded from this page.
 There is more good news for the users and fans of the world's largest Linux distribution project. After a long and hard fund-raising campaign Debian developers Raphaël Hertzog and Roland Mas have generated a sufficient amount of money to enable them to work full-time on an English translation of Cahier de l'admin Debian. The translation has now been completed and The Debian Administrator's Handbook released: "I am so glad that we managed to complete this project. Roland and I have spent countless hours on this book since December, both for the translation itself and also for all the things that we tend to forget: a nice book cover, a great book layout for the print version, coordinating the work of reviewers, registering as an editor to get an ISBN, etc. I think I will come back to this in a future article because some parts of the story are interesting." The book is available for free online viewing and for direct download (in PDF, EPUB, Mobipocket formats), although the authors hope to receive a small contribution for the electronic version. A dead-tree edition is also available, but it costs US$48.86 + shipping. The Debian Administrator's Handbook is presently the most up-to-date English-language book on Debian GNU/Linux.
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 Last week's Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) in Oakland, USA, provided many interesting articles in the Linux media. One of the participants was Scott Lavender, the founder and lead developer of Ubuntu Studio. Those readers interested in low-latency kernels, multimedia development and related activities should find the author's "confessions" from the conference a refreshing read: "One such meeting resulted in the suggestion that I should attempt to get the Ubuntu kernel team to maintain the -lowlatency kernel instead of the Ubuntu Studio team. The main reason is that the patch to make the changes to the configuration files is very small (a purported 'two lines') and could easy be made into a build option which all could be completely automated. Every security patch would happen concurrently as the main kernels are updated and without any additional effort. In contrast, the Ubuntu Studio team needs to manually update the -lowlatency kernel which is not an inappreciable amount of work, for each security update. And these sometimes lag a bit due to scheduling. This would be a major improvement to remove a significant responsibility and time commitment from our small team." There is also a second article which expands on "Desktop JuJu".
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 For those readers who didn't have a chance to follow the above-mentioned UDS conference, here is a concise summary of possible Ubuntu 12.10 features, courtesy of OMG! Ubuntu!: "Ubuntu GNOME fans will be excited by word of a potential vanilla GNOME Ubuntu spin (i.e. GNOME-Shell Remix). Elsewhere, GNOME 3.6 will be used as the base of Ubuntu 12.10. Ubuntu’s Ubiquity installer will be 'beefed up' to provide all of the features offered by the 'alternate installer', resulting in the latter being dropped as a download option. The installer will also see the Windows settings migration assistant feature removed. The team conclude that it is too untested and buggy to remain in place. LibreOffice will finally ship with AppMenu support out of the box, making it fully HUD accessible. Jockey, Ubuntu’s current 3rd party driver installer, will be replaced with a 'better version integrated with System Settings'. Ubuntu 12.10 will use the 3.5 kernel, with a view to supporting the 3.6 version after its release. Python 3 will ship on the CD by default, meaning that various default applications and utilities will be rewritten to take advantage of this."
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| Follow-ups (by Jesse Smith) |
Update on Calligra 2.4 Kexi and Krita
 A few weeks ago I dedicated a review to the new Calligra office suite, formerly known as KOffice. Most of the experience was a positive one. The few bugs or frustrations I ran into could largely be summed up as either personal preference or a side effect of running a beta version of the suite. At the time I had been running Calligra beta 6 from a Ubuntu PPA repository. One bug which stood out came from trying to use the Kexi application to create databases, specially I was unable to create a new database file and was unable as a result to explore Kexi.
Since the review appeared on DistroWatch I've received a good deal of feedback, all of which I appreciated. There was one e-mail in particular which caught my attention and I'd like to share it here: "I'd like to say thank you for reviewing the Calligra 2.4 release. As a Kexi maintainer, I checked availability of Kexi for Ubuntu since you wrote about issues with even a simple setup. Kexi is available for Ubuntu 12.04 and is used by quite a few people with success, apparently works out of the box for them. Please note that we do not deploy the software -- so maybe Ubuntu had not tested some applications (including Kexi) in their beta versions. So the answer is to test the final 2.4.0. I understand a packaging problem was spotted. Thanks again for your interest in Calligra. Regards, Jaroslaw Staniek."
Since Mr Staniek took the time to track down the problem and confirm that the final release of Kexi was working and was available in the Ubuntu repositories I thought it only fair to give Kexi a second try. Kexi (the final release version) is available in the Ubuntu 12.04 repositories and the Kexi application can be downloaded on its own, without requiring us to download the entire Calligra suite. The package is under 10 MB in size, making for a very small download if we already have the necessary KDE libraries installed.
From the point of view of its interface Kexi is perhaps the odd one out when viewed next to the other Calligra applications. Where the other members of the Calligra suite have mostly stuck to a traditional menu system with a very flexible arrangement of toolbars and toolboxes, Kexi presents something more akin to the ribbon interface. Along the top of the screen we find tabs for handling files, creating various components, managing data, importing & exporting, a tools tab and a help menu. When we're working with a database, components of that database (tables, queries, forms, etc) are displayed down the left side of the screen. Opening any of these components will cause information to display on the right side of the window and further present us with two or more tabs. Typically one tab will deal with design (table layout, constructing queries and forms) and another tab will deal with the raw data available in the table or query results.
Calligra 2.4 Kexi - viewing data tables
(full image size: 61kB, screen resolution 1024x702 pixels)
At first glance it's a lot to take in and the interface, being a bit different than the other Calligra components, may take time to become familiar. However, I did find that the design and function of each component, each tab, was consistent. Once a user becomes accustomed to how Kexi works, I found that Kexi provides a very straightforward point-and-click approach to dealing with databases. As with the other members of the Calligra suite I found Kexi to be focused on basic features, but these core features it does well. Import and export controls worked smoothly and I didn't encounter any problems with this stable release. I haven't used Kexi enough to determine how well it scales, but my experience so far suggests it is a good tool for home and small business use. I especially find the table design screen to be surprisingly easy to use compared to other database front-ends as data types and key options are made as simple as possible for us.
Calligra 2.4 Kexi - designing queries
(full image size: 62kB, screen resolution 1024x702 pixels)
The previous week I also received a few messages from fans of the Krita application asking why it was left out of the Calligra review. It's a fair question and I'm sorry to say my answer is simply that journalism is literature in a hurry and, having already reviewed one drawing program from the Calligra collection, I cut Krita from the review. My apologies to its developers and its fans.
In brief, Krita is a bitmap-drawing and image-editing application which is quite a bit more advanced than most simple image editors. I'm not well versed in high-end graphic editors, but Krita appears to be nearly on par with the GNU Image Manipulation Program in features. Like most of the other members of the Calligra suite, Krita presents a menu bar across the top of the screen and toolboxes down the left and right sides of the window. These widgets can be moved around, making for a flexible interface. Where I felt Krita deviated from other Calligra applications was with regards to the number of features and controls. Most of the Calligra programs appear to be focused on a small core of features, making menus uncluttered and easy to navigate. Krita, in carrying so many features, presents a much busier interface and packed menus. Most controls I was able to find with little difficulty, but a few items sent me digging through the menu structure.
Calligra 2.4 Krita - creating an image
(full image size: 139kB, screen resolution 910x702 pixels)
Again, though I'm not much of a graphic artist, I was able to fumble my way through, make multi-layered images, draw shapes, make use of airbrushing, scaling features, etc. One of the few real problems I ran into was manipulating selected regions, though I'm not sure how much of this is my lack of experience and how much is the behaviour of Krita. The other issue I encountered was that parts of the documentation appear to be missing from the website, resulting in broken links when searching for help. Otherwise Krita, like the other Calligra programs, is functional, flexible and a makes for a capable image editor. It feels heavier than its Calligra siblings, but otherwise nicely rounds out the suite.
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| Released Last Week |
SolusOS 1
Ikey Doherty has announced the release of SolusOS 1, an inaugural stable release of the project's desktop Linux distribution based on Debian's "stable" branch featuring the GNOME 2 desktop, but also an updated kernel and applications: "I am pleased to announce the final release of SolusOS 'Eveline' 32-bit edition. All issues have now been corrected and installing from a live USB stick is now possible, via dd or UNetbootin. SolusOS is based on Debian 'stable' and features recent applications, multimedia and will automatically install proprietary graphics drivers if you wish. Brief overview of software versions: Firefox 12.0, Thunderbird 12.0.1, LibreOffice 3.5.3.2, Linux kernel 3.0.0 (with BFS, PAE, preempt), GNOME 2.30, OpenShot 1.4.2, Nautilus Elementary, PlayOnLinux 4.0.18, VLC 2.0.1, FirstRunWizard 0.8. Many new applications are available in the software repository." Read the rest of the release announcement for more information.
SolusOS 1 - the first-ever stable release of the Debian-based desktop distribution
(full image size: 617kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
Salix OS 13.37 "MATE"
George Vlahavas has announced the release of Salix OS 13.37 "MATE" edition, a Slackware-based distribution featuring the increasingly popular fork of the GNOME 2 desktop: "Salix MATE 13.37 is now officially released. Available for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures, this release introduces the MATE desktop environment. For anyone not familiar with MATE, it's a GNOME 2 fork, that continues development of the GNOME 2.x branch. MATE uses the traditional desktop metaphor that was abandoned for newer GNOME 3.x releases. All of the GNOME parts that have been forked have been renamed, so that they don't conflict with GNOME 3.x applications, but otherwise the functionality and behavior is exactly the same as it was in GNOME 2.32.x. For example, the Nautilus file manager is now named Caja in MATE, the Evince document viewer is now Atril and the File-Roller archive manager is now Engrampa." Read the rest of the release announcement for further details.
Rocks Cluster Distribution 5.5, 6.0
Philip Papadopoulos has announced the availability of Rocks Cluster Distribution versions 5.5 and 6.0, two new builds of the project's CentOS-based open-source toolkit for real and virtual clusters: "The latest update of Rocks, code name 'Mamba' is now released. Mamba is available for both CentOS 5.8 (Rocks 5.5) and CentOS 6.2 (Rocks 6.0). The Rocks-supplied OS rolls have all updates applied as of May 7, 2012. Rolls use the same code base but are compiled on the different version of operating systems. Mamba is available for both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures. New features: Rocks now supports both CentOS 5 and CentOS 6 from the same source code; Xen is no longer supported...." See the release announcement and release notes for a full list of new features.
Liberté Linux 2012.1
Maxim Kammerer has announced the release of Liberté Linux 2012.1, a Gentoo-based security live CD with the primary purpose of enabling anyone to communicate safely and covertly in hostile environments: "A new release has been published. Summary of important changes since the previous release: hardened Linux kernel 3.2.11; fixed memory wiping in KEXEC kernel - 64-bit kernel is used for wiping memory where possible and 32-bit kernel can wipe 2.9 GB of RAM; better file system security - most file system is read-only, with carefully selected exceptions; CD/SD boot media ejection now triggers shutdown; perfect forward secrecy and repudiability in cables communication; added open virtualization bundle (OVA) for easy virtual machine setup; replaced Midori browser with Epiphany which uses the same WebKit backend; partial migration to GTK+ 3 and dconf (Midori, Audacious, Gucharmap), using light themes...." Read the rest of the release announcement for a complete list of changes and improvements.
SystemRescueCd 2.7.0
François Dupoux has released an updated build of SystemRescueCd, a Gentoo-based live CD with a collection of data rescue, disk management and networking utilities. What's new? "Updated standard kernels to long-term supported Linux kernel 3.2.16 (rescuecd + rescue64); updated alternative kernels to latest stable Linux kernel 3.3.5 (altker32 + altker64); Updated btrfs-progs from Fedora 17 sources; Updated XFS file system tools xfsprogs 3.1.8 and xfsdump 3.1.0; Updated system packages - GCC 4.4.7, OpenRC 0.9.8.4 and Portage 2.1.10.49; Updated OpenSSH to 5.9p1 and Partclone to 0.2.47; added Debian and Red Hat package management tools (dpkg, debootstrap, rpm); updated pkgstats script to avoid warnings; updated list of graphical programs used by cleansys; removed GObject introspection data to save space." Read the full changelog and take a look at this overview of system tools for further information.
IPFire 2.11 Core 58
Arne Fitzenreiter has announced the release of IPFire 2.11 Core 58, an updated version of the project's specialist distribution for firewalls: "It is time for a maintenance update of the IPFire series 2 which is called Core Update 58. This update comes with cryptodev, a bunch of security fixes and minor bug fixes. Cryptodev has been ported from BSD and provides the kernel crypto system to the userspace. The advantages we gain from that is much faster hashing, encryption and decryption of data. On a normal system, the performance will double, on systems that come with crypto processors like VIA Padlock or Marvell CESA, the speed will be significantly higher and the CPU load will be much lower. The update is shipping fixes for security issues in OpenSSL 0.9.8u and libpng 1.2.46." Read the rest of the release announcement for more details.
ROSA 2012
Konstantin Kochereshkin has announced the release of ROSA 2012, a Linux distribution forked from Mandriva with the goal of delivering a functional and easy-to-use business desktop using KDE 4.8.2: "The ROSA company is pleased to inform that it has completed the work on ROSA 'Marathon' 2012 operating system - a Linux distribution with an extended 5-year technical support and with a focus on enterprise customers. We have optimized the package base of the officially supported main repository of the distribution by selecting the most stable and important components necessary for the enterprise, though still providing desktop users with possibility to install large variety of applications from our extended repositories. The distribution includes application software sufficient to fulfill most typical tasks." Read the press release and the detailed release notes for further information.
ROSA 2012 - a Mandriva fork for enterprise desktop computing
(full image size: 156kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| DistroWatch.com News |
New distributions added to database
- Bridge Linux. Bridge Linux is an Arch Linux derivative that includes a GUI and standard applications. It comes in four separate editions with a choice of GNOME, KDE, LXDE or Xfce desktops.
Bridge Linux 2012.4 - an Arch-based distribution with four desktops
(full image size: 723kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
- Liberté. Liberté Linux is a secure, reliable, lightweight and easy-to-use Gentoo-based live medium with the primary purpose of enabling anyone to communicate safely and covertly in hostile environments.
Liberté Linux 2012.1 - a Gentoo-based security live CD
(full image size: 156kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
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New distributions added to waiting list
- Xinutop. Xinutop is a Xubuntu-based distribution with a collection of useful marine applications, such as: GeBabbel - data conversion and transfer to and from GPS; Fldigi - reception and display of radio weather; OpenCPN - chart plotter, tides, AIS, grib files, GPS interface and other navigation data; Polarcom - virtual instrumentation; XTide - tides with numerical and graphical display; Zygrib - download and display weather grib files. The distribution is available in the form of USB image files in either French or English.
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 21 May 2012. To contact the authors please send email to:
- Ralph Ellis (feedback: the OpenBSD 5.1 review)
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, suggestions and corrections: news, donations, distribution submissions, comments)
- Bruce Patterson (feedback and suggestions: podcast edition)
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| Archives |
| • Issue 1156 (2026-01-19): Chimera Linux's new installer, using the DistroWatch Torrent Corner, new package tools for Arch, Haiku improves EFI support, Redcore streamlines branches, Synex introduces install-time ZFS options |
| • Issue 1155 (2026-01-12): MenuetOS, CDE on Sparky, iDeal OS 2025.12.07, recommended flavour of BSD, Debian seeks new Data Protection Team, Ubuntu 25.04 nears its end of life, Google limits Android source code releases, Fedora plans to replace SDDM, Budgie migrates to Wayland |
| • Issue 1154 (2026-01-05): postmarketOS 25.06/25.12, switching to Linux and educational resources, FreeBSD improving laptop support, Unix v4 available for download, new X11 server in development, CachyOS team plans server edtion |
| • Issue 1153 (2025-12-22): Best projects of 2025, is software ever truly finished?, Firefox to adopt AI components, Asahi works on improving the install experience, Mageia presents plans for version 10 |
| • Issue 1152 (2025-12-15): OpenBSD 7.8, filtering websites, Jolla working on a Linux phone, Germany saves money with Linux, Ubuntu to package AMD tools, Fedora demonstrates AI troubleshooting, Haiku packages Go language |
| • Issue 1151 (2025-12-08): FreeBSD 15.0, fun command line tricks, Canonical presents plans for Ubutnu 26.04, SparkyLinux updates CDE packages, Redox OS gets modesetting driver |
| • Issue 1150 (2025-12-01): Gnoppix 25_10, exploring if distributions matter, openSUSE updates tumbleweed's boot loader, Fedora plans better handling of broken packages, Plasma to become Wayland-only, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1149 (2025-11-24): MX Linux 25, why are video drivers special, systemd experiments with musl, Debian Libre Live publishes new media, Xubuntu reviews website hack |
| • Issue 1148 (2025-11-17): Zorin OS 18, deleting a file with an unusual name, NetBSD experiments with sandboxing, postmarketOS unifies its documentation, OpenBSD refines upgrades, Canonical offers 15 years of support for Ubuntu |
| • Issue 1147 (2025-11-10): Fedora 43, the size and stability of the Linux kernel, Debian introducing Rust to APT, Redox ports web engine, Kubuntu website off-line, Mint creates new troubleshooting tools, FreeBSD improves reproducible builds, Flatpak development resumes |
| • Issue 1146 (2025-11-03): StartOS 0.4.0, testing piped commands, Ubuntu Unity seeks help, Canonical offers Ubuntu credentials, Red Hat partners with NVIDIA, SUSE to bundle AI agent with SLE 16 |
| • Issue 1145 (2025-10-27): Linux Mint 7 "LMDE", advice for new Linux users, AlmaLinux to offer Btrfs, KDE launches Plasma 6.5, Fedora accepts contributions written by AI, Ubuntu 25.10 fails to install automatic updates |
| • Issue 1144 (2025-10-20): Kubuntu 25.10, creating and restoring encrypted backups, Fedora team debates AI, FSF plans free software for phones, ReactOS addresses newer drivers, Xubuntu reacts to website attack |
| • Issue 1143 (2025-10-13): openSUSE 16.0 Leap, safest source for new applications, Redox introduces performance improvements, TrueNAS Connect available for testing, Flatpaks do not work on Ubuntu 25.10, Kamarada plans to switch its base, Solus enters new epoch, Frugalware discontinued |
| • Issue 1142 (2025-10-06): Linux Kamarada 15.6, managing ZIP files with SQLite, F-Droid warns of impact of Android lockdown, Alpine moves ahead with merged /usr, Cinnamon gets a redesigned application menu |
| • Issue 1141 (2025-09-29): KDE Linux and GNOME OS, finding mobile flavours of Linux, Murena to offer phones with kill switches, Redox OS running on a smartphone, Artix drops GNOME |
| • Issue 1140 (2025-09-22): NetBSD 10.1, avoiding AI services, AlmaLinux enables CRB repository, Haiku improves disk access performance, Mageia addresses service outage, GNOME 49 released, Linux introduces multikernel support |
| • Issue 1139 (2025-09-15): EasyOS 7.0, Linux and central authority, FreeBSD running Plasma 6 on Wayland, GNOME restores X11 support temporarily, openSUSE dropping BCacheFS in new kernels |
| • Issue 1138 (2025-09-08): Shebang 25.8, LibreELEC 12.2.0, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, the importance of software updates, AerynOS introduces package sets, postmarketOS encourages patching upstream, openSUSE extends Leap support, Debian refreshes Trixie media |
| • Issue 1137 (2025-09-01): Tribblix 0m37, malware scanners flagging Linux ISO files, KDE introduces first-run setup wizard, CalyxOS plans update prior to infrastructure overhaul, FreeBSD publishes status report |
| • Issue 1136 (2025-08-25): CalyxOS 6.8.20, distros for running containers, Arch Linux website under attack,illumos Cafe launched, CachyOS creates web dashboard for repositories |
| • Issue 1135 (2025-08-18): Debian 13, Proton, WINE, Wayland, and Wayback, Debian GNU/Hurd 2025, KDE gets advanced Liquid Glass, Haiku improves authentication tools |
| • Issue 1134 (2025-08-11): Rhino Linux 2025.3, thoughts on malware in the AUR, Fedora brings hammered websites back on-line, NetBSD reveals features for version 11, Ubuntu swaps some command line tools for 25.10, AlmaLinux improves NVIDIA support |
| • Issue 1133 (2025-08-04): Expirion Linux 6.0, running Plasma on Linux Mint, finding distros which support X11, Debian addresses 22 year old bug, FreeBSD discusses potential issues with pkgbase, CDE ported to OpenBSD, Btrfs corruption bug hitting Fedora users, more malware found in Arch User Repository |
| • Issue 1132 (2025-07-28): deepin 25, wars in the open source community, proposal to have Fedora enable Flathub repository, FreeBSD plans desktop install option, Wayback gets its first release |
| • Issue 1131 (2025-07-21): HeliumOS 10.0, settling on one distro, Mint plans new releases, Arch discovers malware in AUR, Plasma Bigscreen returns, Clear Linux discontinued |
| • Issue 1130 (2025-07-14): openSUSE MicroOS and RefreshOS, sharing aliases between computers, Bazzite makes Bazaar its default Flatpak store, Alpine plans Wayback release, Wayland and X11 benchmarked, Red Hat offers additional developer licenses, openSUSE seeks feedback from ARM users, Ubuntu 24.10 reaches the end of its life |
| • Issue 1129 (2025-07-07): GLF OS Omnislash, the worst Linux distro, Alpine introduces Wayback, Fedora drops plans to stop i686 support, AlmaLinux builds EPEL repository for older CPUs, Ubuntu dropping existing RISC-V device support, Rhino partners with UBports, PCLinuxOS recovering from website outage |
| • Issue 1128 (2025-06-30): AxOS 25.06, AlmaLinux OS 10.0, transferring Flaptak bundles to off-line computers, Ubuntu to boost Intel graphics performance, Fedora considers dropping i686 packages, SDesk switches from SELinux to AppArmor |
| • Issue 1127 (2025-06-23): LastOSLinux 2025-05-25, most unique Linux distro, Haiku stabilises, KDE publishes Plasma 6.4, Arch splits Plasma packages, Slackware infrastructure migrating |
| • Issue 1126 (2025-06-16): SDesk 2025.05.06, renewed interest in Ubuntu Touch, a BASIC device running NetBSD, Ubuntu dropping X11 GNOME session, GNOME increases dependency on systemd, Google holding back Pixel source code, Nitrux changing its desktop, EFF turns 35 |
| • Issue 1125 (2025-06-09): RHEL 10, distributions likely to survive a decade, Murena partners with more hardware makers, GNOME tests its own distro on real hardware, Redox ports GTK and X11, Mint provides fingerprint authentication |
| • Issue 1124 (2025-06-02): Picking up a Pico, tips for protecting privacy, Rhino tests Plasma desktop, Arch installer supports snapshots, new features from UBports, Ubuntu tests monthly snapshots |
| • Issue 1123 (2025-05-26): CRUX 3.8, preventing a laptop from sleeping, FreeBSD improves laptop support, Fedora confirms GNOME X11 session being dropped, HardenedBSD introduces Rust in userland build, KDE developing a virtual machine manager |
| • Issue 1122 (2025-05-19): GoboLinux 017.01, RHEL 10.0 and Debian 12 updates, openSUSE retires YaST, running X11 apps on Wayland |
| • Issue 1121 (2025-05-12): Bluefin 41, custom file manager actions, openSUSE joins End of 10 while dropping Deepin desktop, Fedora offers tips for building atomic distros, Ubuntu considers replacing sudo with sudo-rs |
| • Issue 1120 (2025-05-05): CachyOS 250330, what it means when a distro breaks, Kali updates repository key, Trinity receives an update, UBports tests directory encryption, Gentoo faces losing key infrastructure |
| • Issue 1119 (2025-04-28): Ubuntu MATE 25.04, what is missing from Linux, CachyOS ships OCCT, Debian enters soft freeze, Fedora discusses removing X11 session from GNOME, Murena plans business services, NetBSD on a Wii |
| • Issue 1118 (2025-04-21): Fedora 42, strange characters in Vim, Nitrux introduces new package tools, Fedora extends reproducibility efforts, PINE64 updates multiple devices running Debian |
| • Issue 1117 (2025-04-14): Shebang 25.0, EndeavourOS 2025.03.19, running applications from other distros on the desktop, Debian gets APT upgrade, Mint introduces OEM options for LMDE, postmarketOS packages GNOME 48 and COSMIC, Redox testing USB support |
| • Issue 1116 (2025-04-07): The Sense HAT, Android and mobile operating systems, FreeBSD improves on laptops, openSUSE publishes many new updates, Fedora appoints new Project Leader, UBports testing VoLTE |
| • Issue 1115 (2025-03-31): GrapheneOS 2025, the rise of portable package formats, MidnightBSD and openSUSE experiment with new package management features, Plank dock reborn, key infrastructure projects lose funding, postmarketOS to focus on reliability |
| • Issue 1114 (2025-03-24): Bazzite 41, checking which processes are writing to disk, Rocky unveils new Hardened branch, GNOME 48 released, generating images for the Raspberry Pi |
| • Issue 1113 (2025-03-17): MocaccinoOS 1.8.1, how to contribute to open source, Murena extends on-line installer, Garuda tests COSMIC edition, Ubuntu to replace coreutils with Rust alternatives, Chimera Linux drops RISC-V builds |
| • Issue 1112 (2025-03-10): Solus 4.7, distros which work with Secure Boot, UBports publishes bug fix, postmarketOS considers a new name, Debian running on Android |
| • Issue 1111 (2025-03-03): Orbitiny 0.01, the effect of Ubuntu Core Desktop, Gentoo offers disk images, elementary OS invites feature ideas, FreeBSD starts PinePhone Pro port, Mint warns of upcoming Firefox issue |
| • Issue 1110 (2025-02-24): iodeOS 6.0, learning to program, Arch retiring old repositories, openSUSE makes progress on reproducible builds, Fedora is getting more serious about open hardware, Tails changes its install instructions to offer better privacy, Murena's de-Googled tablet goes on sale |
| • Issue 1109 (2025-02-17): Rhino Linux 2025.1, MX Linux 23.5 with Xfce 4.20, replacing X.Org tools with Wayland tools, GhostBSD moving its base to FreeBSD -RELEASE, Redox stabilizes its ABI, UBports testing 24.04, Asahi changing its leadership, OBS in dispute with Fedora |
| • Issue 1108 (2025-02-10): Serpent OS 0.24.6, Aurora, sharing swap between distros, Peppermint tries Void base, GTK removinglegacy technologies, Red Hat plans more AI tools for Fedora, TrueNAS merges its editions |
| • Issue 1107 (2025-02-03): siduction 2024.1.0, timing tasks, Lomiri ported to postmarketOS, Alpine joins Open Collective, a new desktop for Linux called Orbitiny |
| • Issue 1106 (2025-01-27): Adelie Linux 1.0 Beta 6, Pop!_OS 24.04 Alpha 5, detecting whether a process is inside a virtual machine, drawing graphics to NetBSD terminal, Nix ported to FreeBSD, GhostBSD hosting desktop conference |
| • Issue 1105 (2025-01-20): CentOS 10 Stream, old Flatpak bundles in software centres, Haiku ports Iceweasel, Oracle shows off debugging tools, rsync vulnerability patched |
| • Full list of all issues |
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